


but in my dreams we're still runnin' through the yard

by defcontwo



Category: Robin (Comics)
Genre: Also feelings, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Male Character, F/M, and bowling, sort of break up sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their bodies grew faster than their hearts and here they are with what's left of the in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but in my dreams we're still runnin' through the yard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladymercury_10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymercury_10/gifts).



> AU post "Puddles" by Chuck Dixon from the 2008 special.

_"Maybe you're right, Steph."_

_"I am?"_

_"We need to get out more."_

(Robin/Spoiler Special #1)

"When I said that we should get out more, I don't think I meant this."

Tim stands just inside the door of the bowling alley, arms folded across his chest, a small frown crossing his face that's inching ever so close to a pout. Fucking ridiculous. She wishes she had a camera. 

"Hey now, Nerd Wonder," Steph says, hip-checking him. "We're working, remember? You gotta roll with the punches." 

The man who runs the bowling alley is into some suspicious business, bought a few too many luxury cars this year for a man of his supposed salary. Batman says he might be using the bowling alley as a front for laundering money and drugs for a local gang. 

So here they are. Two normal teenagers out for a night of bowling, keeping their eyes peeled. 

"What a weird saying that is. Have you ever thought about that?"

Tim slants her a sideways glance, lips upturned. She loves that look, that look that's always been just so unbearably fond. "You're going to have to clarify the internal monologue, Brown." 

"Eyes peeled. Pretty gross, don't you think?" 

"Not as gross as the inside of bowling alley shoes," Tim gripes, already making for the counter. "Are you sure I can't just sit this one out?"

"What and leave me to play all by my lonesome? What kind of challenge is that? What are you," Steph says and she knows, just like he does, the way his shoulders have stiffened because this tone is one she's used often with him, the one she uses when it's equal parts fucking with him and getting him to loosen up, getting him to rise to the bait. "Chicken, Drake? Afraid of losing to little ol' me?" 

Tim's jaw clenches, a noticeable giveaway. "Damnit, fine. Let's do this." 

Ten minutes later and all of his reluctance suddenly makes a whole lot of sense. 

"Wow, you really suck at this. I didn't think this would be a thing that you really suck at but _wow_ , Tim." 

"Shut up," Tim bites out. He looks down the lane, bowling ball in hand, eyeing it like he's about to do battle with Mister Freeze. Steph chokes down a laugh.

His form is all wrong but if she tried to correct him, he'd just get all hurt and weird about it, standoffish like he'd get whenever Batman gave him a talking to. 

Tim throws the ball and it goes straight to the gutter. "Oh, come on. Fuck this game."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm definitely sure that our Mister Linus over there is into some dirty dealings." 

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Steph says, picking up her (bright purple) bowling ball and making for the lane. "I've watched him go in and out of the back room at least five times while you were having your bowling crisis over there. Each time, he comes back with a different duffle bag and sticks them into the lockers over there." 

"Clever. Give whoever he's working with the keys to the lockers, they come, they pretend to play around for a bit, collect their things and off they go." 

Steph aims her ball and then throws it. It rolls all the way down the center of the lane, knocking down all ten pins. 

" _How_ ," Tim cries out. 

"Practice," Steph sings out. "We have to come back anyways. Maybe you'll get better." 

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like such a good idea." 

Steph stops, pencil paused in her hand where she was about to fill out her score. Right. Zo. Tim's girlfriend. 

"I didn't mean -- I mean, you know, for the job, we have to come back." 

Tim shakes his head. "Yeah, I know -- look, I mean, it doesn't matter." He rubs at the back of his neck. "Zo dumped me anyways. I guess I'm kind of a shitty boyfriend."

Steph snorts before she can stop herself. "Well, I could have told you _that_."

They stare at each other and there's something quiet and hurt in Tim's eyes that she refuses to apologize for but there's the itch nonetheless, the words 'I'm sorry' crawling their way out of her throat but she stops herself, forces them down. 

She is but she isn't. 

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Tim says. He's gone shuttered, closed off. She hates that look so much, might hate it more than just about anything. Most things, anyways. 

He shakes himself, visibly, before turning back towards the lane. Steph resists the urge to sigh, loudly and dramatically. So they're going to play it like _that_.

"Hey, maybe I'll manage to knock down at least five pins this time," Tim says, all put upon enthusiasm. 

Steph mock winces. "Aim lower, boyo." 

"Two? One?" 

"Yeah, I think that's more your speed."

Tim throws the ball. 

It sinks to the gutter, again. 

Tim's shoulders sink, even as he tilts his head up to the ceiling, mouthing 'why.'

Steph laughs so hard she cries. 

\+ 

"Ready to pay good old Mister Linus and his gang buddies a visit, Robin?" Steph asks, folding her arms across her chest, cocking a hip. 

Tim looks up from where he's studying a gadget from his utility belt, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that they're both standing on the edge of a high rise roof. "You got the info?" 

Steph scoffs. "Would I be here if I didn't? I know what I'm doing, Tim." 

Tim swallows visibly, looks away. "I know you do, Steph." 

He says it like he's trying to convince himself. Steph kind of wants to punch him for it. 

"They're going to be at that old auto factory just outside of town until midnight. Something about a state of the union meeting. O's already got the evidence against them lined up, we just have to deliver it." 

"Well, all right," Tim says, tucking his gadget away, and stepping back from the ledge. "Let's go raise some hell, Spoiler." 

They're a fringe group of one of the old Irish gangs from way back when. They know what they're doing well enough but they don't have enough smarts put together to avoid getting caught. 

Tim and Steph look down on the assorted group of men clustered around a shitty fold out table. 

"Only two of them are armed," Tim whispers. 

"The bodyguards, I take it. Hit them together and then divide and conquer?" 

Tim looks at her and nods, makes a Bat signal with his hands that means: "let's go." Steph smiles, a little, likes that she knows that, likes that he knew she'd know that. 

They leap from above, making for the two bodyguards, knocking their guns out of their hands. Steph takes a minute to dismantle both of them before tossing them aside while Tim has the two larger men wrapped up in a Batarang-line. 

The men are brawlers, not suited for handling two smaller opponents with better training and it's not a hard fight, not really, but they're grossly outnumbered and it is a long one. It takes almost fifteen minutes to knock them all out and by the end of it, Steph is heaving, out of breath, and Tim is bleeding from a gash just above his left eyebrow. 

"Nice work with dismantling the guns," Tim gasps out, before he fumbles for the phone on his belt to call it in. 

They wait another ten minutes for the police to arrive before taking off. They should have brought the Redbird, probably, because they're exhausted and Tim's bleeding and all Steph wants is to collapse into bed. 

They take a breather on a rooftop not far from Steph's neighborhood. "You want me to take a look at that? My place isn't far from here." 

Tim blinks, the blood still running into his eyes. He makes as if to wipe it away before thinking better of it. "Yeah, if you don't mind?" 

Tim, in her home, in her bedroom, after a night of beating the crap out of a bunch of criminals? After a night that sounds a whole lot like most of their dates? 

She's still not sure if she wants to kiss him or hit him. 

Tim is watching her, silent. She wants to say something snappy, like she used to, but nothing comes to mind. It's harder to talk to him these days. 

So, does she mind? Jury's still out. 

Steph shrugs. "Come on, let's go." 

 

\+ 

"Where's your mom?" Tim asks, ducking in through the window. He looks strange in her bedroom, like he's too big for it in a way that he never was before. 

It hurts to look at him now sometimes like he's all sharp edges that will cut if you get too close. Just barely eighteen and carrying the weight of a life four times his, shoulders too small, too bony, to carry the burden. 

Well. She's got her share of sharp edges now too. Just when she thought she had enough already, just when she thought that the world was done carving them out of her for once. 

What a pair they make. 

The uniform doesn't help, for all that it wasn't hers, wasn't his, not the one she knows like the back of her hand -- the shoulders that she'd gripped the first time they kissed, the green-clad thigh nudged between her knees. No green in this one; Tim's own private funeral garb. All it is is a reminder. Things lost, things gained, things torn apart. 

"Night shift. She won't be home until six AM." 

He nods, looks around her room like it's foreign, like he never snuck through her window about a dozen and a half times. 

Steph ducks her head, making for the bathroom to tug out the First Aid kit from where she'd stashed it under the sink. When she goes back into her bedroom, Tim is sitting on her bed, waiting, the heel of his palm held to his eyebrow to stem the bleeding. 

"I think it looks worse than it is," Tim says. 

Steph snorts, sitting down next to him on the bed, and brushing away his hand. She raises the wet towel she brought with her to wipe away the blood, pressing the towel down slightly, the pressure making him wince. "You always say that." 

"And it's usually not that bad." 

"Stubborn weirdo," Steph mutters, digging a butterfly bandage out of the kit, placing it softly over the wound, fingers ghosting over skin, Tim's eyes fluttered closed. It's dangerous, him and her alone in a room and they are both of them aware of the inevitable. The night has been long and they are both of them aching and tired, worn out from the adrenaline rush and sparking all over. It was always like this after a fight, after one of _their_ dates. 

No need to rush it, though. 

"Steph," Tim says, clears his throat but it still sounds dry, like sandpaper, like he can't find anything to say that's not words for a girl that doesn't exist anymore. 

Or, well. She could be projecting a bit there. 

An inch and then another and then hesitant lips brush over hers and she moves, crosses the distance that could be nothing, could be a mile, cups his jaw with her right hand and deepens the kiss, makes it worth something. His hands fall to her hips, gauntlets digging into kevlar and she wants fingers into soft skin, wants all of the barriers between them to fall away. 

"Fuck, _Steph_." 

Forehead to forehead and his eyes have gone dark, hungry, but his hands have fallen to the bedspread, he's watching, waiting, letting her make the move. 

"Does this uniform still come off like the old one or is this gonna be an effort?" 

Tim laughs, quiet and close. "Same as the old one." 

Eager fingers find old traps, follow familiar patterns until their uniforms are so much kevlar piled onto the floor and she is pressed to the bed, Tim running hesitant hands down her sides, Tim sucking kisses into the soft skin of her collarbone. She shifts upwards towards the head of the bed, let's him get better leverage, but stops, stiffens as a sliver of moonlight falls over her, highlights things that she's been doing a good job of ignoring, covering up. 

"Do you want me to stop?"

"I -- I don't know," Steph says, head falling back, knocking against the wall. "I think I forget sometimes. That they're there."

"I have scars too, you know."

Steph laughs and it is something sharp and bitter and just barely scraped out of her. "Yeah, not quite like this." 

"But you're still here," Tim says, voice barely above a whisper and it strikes her that that look he's been giving her for weeks, it's like he's seeing a ghost that he's not quite sure he believes is there but he wants so badly to be real. He looks at her like he could never stop, like looking away would mean that she might disappear, fall away into nothing. 

She's not sure how it makes her feel. Not good, not bad, but there's an ache there, something soft and familiar and Tim-shaped, the way he used to look at her like she hung the moon in the sky. 

"Did you do this with any other girls while I was away?" Steph says, settles back on her elbows. She's changing the subject with absolutely zero subtlety but he smiles wryly, lets her have it. 

"Define this. I did kiss my ex-girlfriend once or twice, yeah." 

Steph reaches down, flicks him on the forehead. "You know what I mean." 

She might have stopped the clock but the intent was there. Sure, they'd only done this a handful of times before. It was an awkward sort of fumbling that they'd had to work at, Tim too eager to please and Steph not sure if she even knew how to ask for what she wanted. They'd done all right, in the end, Tim in the curve of her legs, Tim and his mouth sending sparks up and down her spine, things that she'd forgotten she could have. He'd missed the spot a few times until he'd got it right. She'd made a joke, she remembers, about the Robin work ethic. _"Show me that dedication, Boy Wonder."_

It feels like forever ago. 

"No, I didn't." 

A beat and then: "Any boys?" 

He flushes, ducks his head. She almost opens her mouth, almost makes the usual crack about big arms and superhero jawlines that she'd never really meant, not really. 

She would have been more jealous, she thinks, if Tim hadn't been so very Tim about it. _"My first crush was Robin,"_ he'd said, expression open and a little scared and it was so rare for him that she'd shrugged, let it all in, asked if Superboy really was as hot as the poster made him out to be. He'd made a face so priceless that whenever she thought of it days after, she broke off into peals of laughter. 

But the words fall flat in her throat. Superboy is dead. The joke's not funny anymore. 

"Cape or civilian?" 

"Civilian. When I was in Blüdhaven. It -- well, it maybe wasn't the best time for me to be fooling around with anyone. I was in a shitty headspace. I ended it pretty quickly." 

Steph hums. "Think you still remember how it goes? I mean, sure the mechanics are a little different but the key ingredient is still the same." 

"Dedication?" 

"Now there's _my_ Boy Wonder."

Tim shifts, presses a kiss to her hip. "You sure?" 

Steph tangles her fingers in his hair. "Yeah, Boy Wonder, I'm sure." 

Tim hooks a finger in her underwear, pulling it down and off, nips at the inside of her thigh, breath ghosting over her folds and -- yeah. _Dedication_. 

It's the Robin way. 

\+ 

She wakes, sore from the fight and freezing cold, the blankets kicked off the edge of the bed, Tim at her back, one arm hanging over the side. It's only been a few hours -- the alarm clock flashes 5:30 AM. Her mom will be home soon. 

There was a time when she would have risked it. A time when she would have shoved him into the closet just long enough for her mom to check in only to sneak him back out, tuck him back into bed with her, him with all his bony elbows and messy bed head. 

"Steph, you awake?" 

"Yeah," Steph says, sitting up, pulling her knees up to her chest. "Wide awake, actually. Guess we'll sleep when we're dead, huh?" 

Tim cracks a smile, doesn't laugh. "That's what I keep telling myself." 

They sit in silence, let it stretch to a few minutes, let the air fill with the weight of all the things they aren't saying. 

"We're not good for each other, are we," Steph says at last. A statement, not a question. 

Tim blows out a breath. "Not really, no. At least not -- not like this, anyways." 

Romance doesn't suit them, not anymore. Maybe one day it will, again, but the spaces that they'd once carved out for each other no longer fit, like puzzle pieces worn down too much with age. 

Too many ghosts lay between them, mostly their own. She thinks sometimes that there must be a grave plot somewhere on the edge of town, somewhere where their bodies are stowed away, Robin and The Spoiler, sixteen and seventeen -- happy and in love and mostly carefree. Old costumes and old relics laid to rest. 

Their bodies grew faster than their hearts and here they are with what's left of the in between. 

Tim shifts up, comes to sit at the head of the bed with her, pulls his own knees up to his chest. "I really love you, Steph." 

Steph sighs. His right hand lies next to her left on the bedspread and she reaches out her pinky, tangles it with his. "I really love you too, Tim." 

"Hey, we can still go bowling," Tim says. Steph cackles and it echoes in the stillness of the room. Tim leans his head on her shoulder and her other hand raises up, unbidden, fingers carding idly through his hair. 

"Yeah and I'll kick your ass again. Hey, you know what we should do? Monthly bowling, loser always pays for after bowling bacon cheeseburgers." 

Tim groans. "I'll _always_ be paying." 

Steph pats his cheek. "Suck it up, rich boy. You can handle it." 

Tim cracks a grin. It looks good on him, like he should do it more often. "Yeah, I guess I can." 

They could have done this all wrong. They could have gone in circles around each other trying to pretend like the last year never happened, trying to pretend like they still worked in ways they didn't. 

It's good, Steph thinks, that they've done it this way. Better. Maybe now they can be something different. 

The sun is starting to come up. In the distance, there's the creak at the front door. In another second, Steph will push Tim off the bed, hiss at him to dress and dress quickly and then try and fail to muffle a laugh as he tries to hop into his tights. 

But for now, she lets out a breath and stays in the moment. It feels more like possibilities than endings.


End file.
